Music and Dance Reviews : Violist Phelps Solos With South Bay

There seemed just cause in programming not one, but two viola solos for the latest concert by the Chamber Orchestra of the South Bay.

Cynthia Phelps--the locally born and trained young soloist on this occasion, Sunday night at the Norris Theatre in Palos Verdes--certainly revealed the technical and artistic means for the task at hand.

But there were personal reasons to celebrate as well: She has just been named principal violist of the New York Philharmonic.

Her first vehicle was the American composer Alan Shulman’s 1941 Theme and Variations for viola and orchestra, a solidly crafted and unpresuming piece of folksy lyricism and muted bravado. Phelps tossed off all technical challenges with ease--a series of rapid double-stops in the second variation particularly impressed--and her richness of tone radiated an almost palpable warmth.

After intermission, concertmistress Miwako Watanabe joined Phelps in an ever-expressive and engaging reading of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, K. 364. The duo proved equally matched in balance as well as in soloistic projection of line, a rarely achieved must in this piece.

One only regretted that, as live performance is in no small part theater, the soloists were not in a position to make eye contact with each other possible.

In addition to solid backup in the solo works, the Chamber Orchestra and music director Frances Steiner provided a wonderfully vital and crisply executed performance of the First Suite from Handel’s Water Music. With no place to hide in the bone-dry, exposing acoustic of the Norris, hornists Peggy Walsch and William Alsup offered clean and lean traversals of the acrobatic fanfares.